Quotes from James McBride

A man ain't got to stand in church every Sunday to do God's work.

a solitary middle-aged man in the August of life looking for a few more Aprils, an

You have to choose between what the world expects of you and what you want for yourself," my sister Jack told me several times. "Put yourself in God's hands and you can't go wrong.

This is what happens when a boy becomes a man. You get stupider.

You've got to be strong to get old.

Son, a blessing favors them that needs it. Don't matter how it comes. It just matters that it does.

I was ashamed of my mother, but see, love didn't come natural to me until I became a Christian.- Ruth McBride

So he drinks and grows plants and goes to church," Potts said. "So far, he sounds Catholic.

God I am looking for the one thing I have never felt but once, and I would walk through heaven and earth to find it, if he would but let me find him, so that I could feel it; and if I were to feel it again I would never leave that feeling, or him that gave it to me. - The Dreamer

We all got to die, she said. But dying as your true self is always better. God'll take you however you come to Him. But it's easier on a soul to come to Him clean. You're forever free that way. From top to bottom.

The man was the finest preacher. He could make a frog stand up straight and get happy with Jesus.

Most times I don't know what I'm doing. Sometimes I feel like I don't hardly know enough to tie my own shoes.

for one thing you learns when you is a girl is that most women's hearts is full of secrets.

He felt like a radio tuning in to a new channel, one that was beginning to fuzz into range, slowly coming in clear, proper, the way his Hettie had always wanted him to be. The new feeling humbled him.

In that moment he realized that all the experience of thirty-two years in the NYPD and all the formal police training in the world was useless when the smile of someone you suddenly care about finds the bow that wraps your heart and undoes it.

She laughed, and as she did, Potts felt as if he were watching a dark, silent mountain suddenly blink to life, illuminated by a hundred lights from a small, quaint village that had lived on the mountainside for a hundred years, the village appearing out of nowhere, all the lights aglow at once. Every feature of her face glowed. He found himself wanting to tell her every sorrow he ever knew

Chase looked 'round and seen Frederick's grave where we'd buried him. Who's that? Don't know. We been hiding in this thicket while the Free Staters was scouting 'round here. I heard 'em say it was one of theirs. Chase pondered the grave thoughtfully. It's a fresh grave. We ought to see if who'sever in there got on boots, he said.

I had thoroughly been a girl so long by then that I'd grown to like it, got used to it, got used to not having to lift things, and have folks make excuses for me on account of me not being strong enough, or fast enough, or powerful enough like a boy, on account of my size. But that's the thing. You can play one part in life, but you can't be that thing. You just playing it. You're not real.

skinny as horsehair in a glass of milk

Everybody went to jail in the Cause eventually. You could be the tiniest ant able to slip into a crack in the sidewalk, or a rocket ship that flew fast enough to break the speed of sound, it didn't matter. When society dropped its hammer on your head, well, there it is.

Being a Negro's a lie, anyway. Nobody sees the real you. Nobody knows who you are inside. You just judged on what you are on the outside whatever your color. Mulatto, colored, black, it don't matter. You just a Negro to the world.

He said he loved Blue. He said he loved the evil in Blue. He loves the evil in all people. Because in loving their evil, he loves the evil in himself enough to surrender it to God, who washes it clean. He's loving what God made, is what he said.

The Star-Spangled Banner,'" she scoffed. "I never did like that old lying, lollygagging, hypocritical, warring-ass drinking song. With the bombs bursting in air and so forth.

because in her heart it was proof that God was forever generous with His gifts: hope, love, truth, and the belief in the indestructability of the good in all people.